On her 12:00 p.m. ET hour show on Wednesday, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell attempted to falsely place partial blame on the Trump administration for migrants at the U.S. border being marked with numbers on their arms. In reality, the practice has been traced back to volunteers with the Mexican Red Cross and was in no way implemented by the U.S.
“And the fact that they were using indelible ink to put numbers on the arms of these children....I know that was Mexicans as well, the other side, but the insensitivity – it was an agreement that this was the way they were going to track people, and it’s just hideous,” Mitchell proclaimed. National Security Reporter Julie Ainsley had to jump in to correct the host: “They decided to track people by their numbers, I do not believe that it was Americans writing the numbers on their arms.”
In fact, just two days earlier, MSNBC reporter Cal Perry explained: “Now, it’s important to note that Mexican groups are putting these numbers on the arm, partly to attract this kind of attention....because it looks like the holocaust because these people are being treated like numbers.” He proceeded to condemn any criticism of migrant parents bringing their children on a dangerous journey to the U.S. as “xenophobic nonsense.”
On Wednesday, Mitchell still seemed to blame the U.S. for the numbering: “But it also tells people around the world, in the images of people at our border with numbers being placed on their arms, is such a remind of the Holocaust that it is not acceptable.”
Apparently she was so invested in the idea that the Trump administration must be at least partly the cause of such a process that she wanted to keep insisting there was a connection.
Here is a transcript of Mitchell’s December 19 exchange with Ainsley:
12:39 PM ET
(...)
ANDREA MITCHELL: And the fact that they were using indelible ink to put numbers on the arms of these children –
JULIE AINSLEY: Well –
MITCHELL: I know that was Mexicans as well, the other side, but the insensitivity – it was an agreement that this was the way they were going to track people, and it’s just hideous.
AINSLEY: They decided to track people by their numbers, I do not believe that it was Americans writing the numbers on their arms. But it does just show – I mean you can see, what, those are three, four-digit numbers, that’s how many people are waiting to get in. A lot of them [with] kind of very serious medical problems like Jakelin, but were not able to screen them when they’re on other side of the border.
The other thing that I understand is still coming is this agreement that the U.S. is trying to work out with Mexico to hold people there perhaps even longer before they can come through, to try to put this problem on Mexico. And what it does is it drives up these images of more people on the border, which can play into the President’s hand in a lot of ways.
MITCHELL: But it also tells people around the world, in the images of people at our border with numbers being placed on their arms, is such a remind of the Holocaust that it is not acceptable.
(...)
